Surveying Your Way Out of a Crisis

To my surprise, at 4 pm on the Friday before New Year’s, as I was just about to leave work, the phone rang. Our client was in a panic. One of their customer’s complaints had exploded on Instagram earlier in the week. The complaint then jumped from Instagram to Facebook and other social networks, going viral in the worst way.

The anecdote reinforced negative perceptions of the brand. The story was not going away. Initial corporate responses hadn’t worked.

The client asked if we could conduct a survey of 1,000 Americans immediately. We collaborated on a questionnaire, programmed it, and launched it that evening. The survey included general brand awareness questions, news awareness (to determine what percentage had heard of the issue), and then message-tested a number of responses.

We presented to the CMO on Saturday morning. When none of the messages resonated, we fielded another survey that day with added messages.

With a winning message in hand, we then ended up running a daily tracker for two weeks until awareness dissipated and sentiment broke the client’s way. We did a final follow-up wave two months later to determine any residual awareness and impact.

We weren’t executing a client’s crisis-management plan, just reacting quickly and in the moment to evolving needs, leveraging our investment in automation to be able to conduct research and analysis very quickly.

To make sure you’re never caught unsure how to respond, make sure to identify which of your partners will be able to help you in event of a crisis.

Author Notes:

Jeffrey Henning

Jeffrey Henning, IPC is a professionally certified researcher and has personally conducted over 1,400 survey research projects. Jeffrey is a member of the Insights Association and the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers. In 2012, he was the inaugural winner of the MRA’s Impact award, which “recognizes an industry professional, team or organization that has demonstrated tremendous vision, leadership, and innovation, within the past year, that has led to advances in the marketing research profession.” In 2022, the Insights Association named him an IPC Laureate. Before founding Researchscape in 2012, Jeffrey co-founded Perseus Development Corporation in 1993, which introduced the first web-survey software, and Vovici in 2006, which pioneered the enterprise-feedback management category. A 35-year veteran of the research industry, he began his career as an industry analyst for an Inc. 500 research firm.